can't login to home folder after update

Here is an earlier thread where this has already been discussed:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254143123

@HWTech

Thanks for the Reply.

Yes I have a local 'admin' account I can log into. Yes I can see my external drive and the contents from that account. Under /Volumes there there is an empty folder with the same name as my drive. This has happened before with a previous update. What I did last time was open users with the admin account and make sure my home folder pointed to my external drive. Then log out or reboot and I was back in business. With 12.6 none of those tricks works. I also tried deleting or renaming the 'empty' folder before pointing my home folder back to the external drive - nothing works.

From the other thread and my own observations it appears that the OS is trying to access the home folder before the drive gets mounted and when it can't find the folder it creates and empty one and you log in to a 'new user' experience. Lame, I've been using an external drive as my home for years.

On the other thread I found one temp workaround that gets me in for now:

1. Log into a local account with Admin access.
2. Point your user account to the external drive (advanced options on your account in Users & Groups
3. Use fast user switching to get into your account (don't log out of the admin account)

It's not great but at least I can use my Mac for now.

Very disappointed in Apple. I guess they really want you to buy the large internal SDD option instead of using an external drive to save money.

johnwmarshall4 wrote:

I am in the same situation. My home folder is on an external drive and after the upgrade to 12.6 I can't log in. Using an admin account to redirect etc. is not working.

In this situation, at least one user account must exist on the internal boot drive or macOS won't be able to boot. If you log into a macOS user account located on the internal boot drive, are you able to see the external drive and mount it and navigate its contents to see the user folder and the top level elements of that folder (Desktop, Documents, Downloads, etc.)? If not, then you have other problems as well with the external drive. You won't be able to open those other folders, but you should see them as locked with a small red circle with a white dash.

I upgraded to MacOS Ventura and had success. I upgraded from my Admin account (local drive). Then after the upgrade I logged back into to Admin and made sure my external home drive showed up in /Volumes properly with no empty folders etc. Then I rebooted and logged directly into my ‘external’ account and it worked. Fingers crossed.

I am in the same situation. My home folder is on an external drive and after the upgrade to 12.6 I can't log in. Using an admin account to redirect etc. is not working.

Does anyone know if the macOS Ventura fixes this problem?

No, Ventura users reported the same thing.